Love Bytes [Hardcover]

Sally Chapman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1994

Computer expert and amateur sleuth Julie Blake returns to investigate a missing-persons case in which the technology of virtual reality hides a killer, in a mystery set in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley. By the author of Raw Data.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reality and virtual reality meet in Chapman's charming and suspenseful second novel, following Raw Data. Bondsperson Lorna Donatello approaches San Francisco computer fraud investigators Julie Blake and her partner/lover Vic Paoli to find bail-jumper Arnie Lufkin. Lufkin, a hacker accused of stealing half a million dollars from his employers, had been working on a revolutionary VR program. Lorna gives the investigators a CD-ROM, which she had mistakenly thought was a music CD, on which, she says, is Lufkin's latest project. Intrigued, the investigators agree to look into the case, but before they start, Julie finds a threatening poem on her computer screen when she logs on. She and Vic track Lufkin to an employment headhunter who, though she may have helped him after he skipped bail, is now dead of poisoning. After Julie "witnesses" the murder on the CD, the duo is convinced that Lufkin, who was reported as having jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, is not only alive but dangerous. Chapman's computer tale is reader-friendly entertainment.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Julie Blake, first introduced in Raw Data (1991), returns in her second appearance, and it's about time, too. Again set in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco area and featuring computer nerds, this tale finds Julie about to open her own business investigating computer fraud, in partnership with Vic Paoli, her very hunky boyfriend. Their affair has progressed quite nicely, but their business is going nowhere. When Lorna Donatello, owner of a bail-bond business, asks them to find her missing boyfriend, Julie declines. But when it turns out that the boyfriend is Arnie Lufkin, the best-known virtual-reality programmer in the business, who has recently been arrested for embezzling half a million by hacking into his employer's general-ledger software, Vic persuades Julie that they should take the job even if it's not exactly computer fraud. Julie reluctantly agrees and almost immediately becomes the victim of a hacker, who interrupts her computer to warn her to back off from the search. This only whets her appetite, of course, and soon she is tracking Arnie by using the virtual-reality programs he left with Lorna. Chapman obviously knows the computer business inside out, and she uses it to great effect in this deftly plotted, wonderfully intriguing mystery. The only complaint is that we had to wait three years for Julie's second adventure--let's hope for a third in a third of the time. Stuart Miller

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 226 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312110235
• ISBN-13: 978-0312110239
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,071,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love Bytes...but this book doesn't!, December 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Love Bytes (Paperback)

My husband and I both loved this book. The characters (Julie Blake and Vic Paoli) are smart, sexy and very real. Even though Julie and Paoli, as Julie calls him, are computer jockeys, the story is zippy and intense. We've read both books in Ms. Chapman's series, and have been salivating for the third.